The Week

Labor activist Dolores Huerta has thrown her support behind Berkeley’s controversial coffee
initiative, which would require all retailers in the city to sell only organic, shade-grown or Fair Trade coffee.

Local historical archives are enlivened with thousands of still pictures showing Berkeley's places, people, and events of past decades. But for a more animated glimpse into early local life, nothing beats old home movies, newsreels and other film footage.
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NEW YORK — New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka criticized Israeli and Jewish groups’ involvement in U.S. politics and reiterated that he would not give up his post as official state poet amid accusations of anti-Semitism.
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The Cal women’s soccer team broke two ugly streaks on Friday during their 2-0 win over Oregon. The Bears scored their first goals of the Pac-10 season, and Laura Schott got her first goal in almost a year.
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POINT SUR — Two unarmed Super Hornet fighter jets crashed over the Pacific Ocean about 80 miles southwest of Monterey during routine training Friday morning. The Coast Guard searched for four missing members of the Black Aces squadron from Lemoore Naval Air Station.
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LOS ANGELES — Scientists in California and Virginia will try to decode the genetic makeup of two plant-destroying microbes, including one blamed for killing tens of thousands of oak trees along the West Coast.
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SAN FRANCISCO – The attorney for the son of Bay Area food critic and chef Narsai David said Friday that he may stop defending Daniel David, 36, against federal charges of fraud and money laundering because of a potential conflict of interest.
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SAN FRANCISCO — The feud over Barry Bonds’ historic 73rd home run ball has gone to court, starting a flurry of arguments from both sides about what it means to be a spectator to the great American pastime and whether scuffling over baseballs hit into the stands is just the name of the game.
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LOS ANGELES — Forty alleged members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison-based gang, have been indicted on racketeering charges stemming from a series of violent crimes that included 16 murders and 16 attempted murders, federal officials announced Thursday.
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About 60 pro-Palestinian UC Berkeley students and supporters gathered on the steps of Sproul Hall Wednesday calling on the university to drop conduct charges against 32 student activists who participated in the April 9 occupation of Wheeler Hall.
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The Oakland Ballet’s program 2, featuring two world premieres and two company premieres, made for an entertaining evening of dance last weekend at Oakland's opulent Paramount Theatre. Of the four pieces, the most successful were Agnes de Mille's “Three Virgins and a Devil” and Mexican choreographer Gloria Contreras’ “Opus 45.”
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Chris Huffins, former NCAA decathlon champion at Cal and current assistant track & field coach at Georgia Tech, will return to Berkeley as the school’s new director of track and field and cross country, Cal Athletic Director Steve Gladstone announced Wednesday.
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LOS ANGELES — With a deadly sniper terrorizing the suburbs of the nation’s capital, 20th Century Fox has decided to delay the release of a thriller about people being pinned down in a phone booth by a gunman they can’t see.
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UNITED NATIONS — The United States came under a barrage of criticism Wednesday as the Security Council held an open debate at the behest of dozens of countries angry with the Bush administration’s threat to attack Iraq.
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SACRAMENTO — A majority of California nursing homes fail to meet federal standards and nearly half have not met minimum nurse-staffing levels set by the state, a review by a health care group found.
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SAN FRANCISCO — The West Coast port shutdown was not a calamity for all involved: food banks from San Francisco to New York City are finding pantries fat with tons of perishables that never made it to market.
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SACRAMENTO — The California Energy Commission and the California Power Authority have set up a program to distribute $1.25 million in grants for schools to install rooftop solar energy systems, officials said Wednesday.
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SACRAMENTO — California is getting a $2.3 million federal grant to expand benefits and continue group crisis counseling for family members and survivors of last year’s terrorist attacks, officials said Wednesday.
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LOS ANGELES — An Orange County tourist who narrowly avoided being caught in the deadly Bali nightclub bombing that killed his friend returned to California on Wednesday, breaking into sobs as people told him, “It’s good to have you back.”
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Just two months after hundreds of UC Berkeley office assistants, childcare workers and library assistants walked off the job, the university’s clerical employees, locked in a bitter contract dispute with the university over wages and workplace safety, began a new round of voting Tuesday to authorize a second strike.
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City Council spared two popular programs from the chopping block Tuesday, including winter swimming at Willard Pool. But as officials dealt with city budget forecasts, they agreed that additional across-the-board cuts would be inevitable.
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HELENA, Mont. — A U.S. senator is demanding an explanation from the National Park Service for why it cut short the season of a Yellowstone National Park ranger who earlier was ordered to stop speaking out about unscrupulous hunters.
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OAKLAND – A significant budget gap is plaguing the Oakland Unified School District and county officials have appointed a fiscal advisor while they wait to find out just how much money is missing.
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SAN FRANCISCO – Immigration activists in 12 states are rallying and lobbying congressional representatives this week in an election-season effort to generate support for legalizing undocumented workers.
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SAN FRANCISCO – It was all smiles Tuesday at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting, where the sometimes contentious panel voted 11-0 to give the city’s Olympic bid a vital green light – three years ahead of schedule.
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SACRAMENTO – More of the fastest-growing businesses, as ranked by Inc. Magazine, are from California than from any other state, negating an impression the state’s business climate is too unfriendly, state officials said.
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SAN DIEGO – The trial of a former toxicologist accused of poisoning her husband began Tuesday with prosecutors using a series of passionate e-mails and a glass drug pipe to illustrate the twin obsessions they claim led her to commit murder: a torrid office affair and an addiction to methamphetamine.
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VOLCANO, Hawaii – Mauna Loa is stirring after an 18-year pause, and an eruption could be devastating to the neighborhoods built on the giant volcano’s slopes in the intervening years, scientists said Monday.
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WASHINGTON – Hikers, mountain climbers, hunters and others who could find themselves lost or hurt will have a new way to call for help: a handheld device that signals the same satellite rescue system that has watched over pilots and boaters for two decades.
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The University of California, pushing to conclude a year-old contract dispute with 18,000 secretaries, library assistants and childcare workers, has imposed an Oct. 31 deadline on the employees’ union to accept a two-year, 3.5 percent salary increase.
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SAN FRANCISCO – The San Francisco Giants have announced that tickets to possible World Series games between the Giants and Anaheim Angels at Pacific Bell Park will go on sale to the general public on Wednesday morning.
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A small group of union activists held a teach-in on the UC Berkeley campus Monday, supporting hundreds of lecturers and clerical employees striking at five other UC campuses over wages and job security.
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SAN RAFAEL — Marin County health officials and community groups soon will be polling residents as part of an effort to learn why the scenic, affluent region north of San Francisco is home to one of the nation’s highest rates of breast cancer.
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MARTINEZ — The Martinez Police Department says a man was placed in custody Monday after he went on an alleged crime spree that included robbing a house, crashing a stolen vehicle into a police car and attempted carjacking.
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SAN FRANCISCO — While the battle between Microsoft Corp. and the open-source software movement dominates headlines, another phenomenon is shaping the marketplace — at least for servers used by businesses.
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SAN DIEGO — Teams of security officers with the U.S. Coast Guard have surveyed a handful of ports nationwide to determine whether they are vulnerable to a terrorist attack, a newspaper reported Monday.
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DENISON, Iowa — Up to 11 badly decomposed bodies, possibly belonging to immigrants who were being smuggled into the country, were found in a Union Pacific rail car parked at a grain elevator outside of town, authorities said Monday.
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SAN FRANCISCO — More than 1,000 lecturers at five University of California campuses picketed Monday instead of teaching their classes as part of a two-day strike they hope will pressure the administration to compromise on contract issues.
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LOS ANGELES — A study of 80 men — 40 who saw combat in Vietnam and their twins who did not — suggests the size of a region of the brain involved in storing memories can predict one’s vulnerability to post-traumatic stress disorder.
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SACRAMENTO — With high-tech art and music studios, ballet and tap dance classes and a theater, the Natomas Performing and Fine Arts Academy in Sacramento looks more like a private university than a public school.
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PHILADELPHIA— Dom Spatano, who runs a deli in the Reading Terminal Market downtown, said Monday he has changed what he puts in his kids’ lunchboxes because of the biggest meat recall in U.S. history.
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PHILADELPHIA— Dom Spatano, who runs a deli in the Reading Terminal Market downtown, said Monday he has changed what he puts in his kids’ lunchboxes because of the biggest meat recall in U.S. history.
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If the opening hearing for 32 students who took over a UC Berkeley campus building is any indicator, the total bill for the remaining hearings will be at least $400,000, according to estimates by university officials.
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LOS ANGELES - The fifth-ranked Cal women’s soccer team lost its second straight game on Sunday, falling 2-0 to No. 15 USC. The Bears fell to 0-2 in Pac-10 play (7-4-1 overall) after losing, 1-0, to UCLA on Friday. The Trojans improved to 6-4-3 overall, 1-1 in the Pac-10.
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BALI, Indonesia — Terrified tourists tried Sunday to flee this island paradise that turned into an inferno, with the death toll from a pair of bombings climbing to 187 and fears growing that al-Qaida has taken its terror campaign to the world’s largest Muslim country.
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SAN FRANCISCO — Lately quite a few large food companies have gotten into the organic food market, giving California organic farmers, often the foes of large agriculture businesses, something of a shock.
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LOS ANGELES – Nearly one-fifth of the $64 million Gov. Gray Davis has raised for his re-election has been donated by people he appointed to state boards and commissions, according to a report published Sunday.
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BAGRAM, Afghanistan — U.S. troops are giving confiscated weapons and ammunition to warlords in Afghanistan, a practice that critics say strengthens private militias and undermines attempts to establish a national army.
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BISMARCK, N.D. — Duck hunters in two boats died in separate accidents after their vessels capsized or sank in choppy North Dakota lakes. Three bodies were recovered by Tuesday as divers continued searching for a fourth man.
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